A Weblog by One Humble Bookman on Topics of Interest to Discerning Readers, Including (Though Not Limited To) Science Fiction, Books, Random Thoughts, Fanciful Family Anecdotes, Publishing, Science Fiction, The Mating Habits of Extinct Waterfowl, The Secret Arts of Marketing, Other Books, Various Attempts at Humor, The Wonders of New Jersey, the Tedious Minutiae of a Boring Life, Science Fiction, No Accounting (For Taste), And Other Weighty Matters.

Who Is This Hornswoggler?

Andrew Wheeler is a Vassar alum, class of 1990. He spent 16 years as a bookclub editor (mostly for the Science Fiction Book Club), and then moved into marketing. He marketed books and related products to accountants for Wiley for eight years, and now works for Thomson Reuters as Senior Marketer for Corporate Counsel. He was a judge for the 2005 World Fantasy Awards and the 2008 Eisner Awards. He also reviewed a book a day for a year twice. He lives with The Wife and two mostly tame sons (Thing One, born 1998; and Thing Two, born 2000) at an unspecified location in suburban New Jersey. He has been known to drive a minivan, and nearly all of his writings are best read in a tone of bemused sarcasm. Antick Musings’s manifesto is here. All opinions expressed here are entirely and purely those of Andrew Wheeler, and no one else.

Monday, October 15, 2012

(Translated out of teenagerese -- I've got a high school freshman, so I'm working to become fluent in it these days -- that means that below you will find descriptions, and possibly a smidgen of analysis, of a number of new and forthcoming books that were sent to me by their respective publishers over the last week. I have not yet read any of them. We return you to Antick Musings in progress.)

...passersby were amazed by the unusually large amounts of blood.

Home is not officially a zombie novel. Matthew Costello's second novel -- a sequel to his first, Vacation -- is set in an apocalyptic near-future where there are flesh-eating formerly-human monsters have overrun society, destroyed the rule of law and order, torn families apart, and made getting a decent tee-time a thing of the past, admittedly. But they're called Can-Heads, so they are most assuredly not zombies. But, if you like to read about a small band of plucky survivors killing lots and lots of people -- and feeling morally superior because they're not really "people," so killing them is just fine -- you'll have another opportunity to indulge your baser instincts when Thomas Dunne Books publishes Home on October 30th.

DAW is publishing it's usual three mass-market paperback in November, and I have copies of them in my hot little hands right now:

Shadowheart is the fourth and concluding book in Tad Williams's big epic-fantasy series "Shadowmarch"

Polterheist is the fifth book in Laura Resnick's ongoing urban fantasy series about Esther Diamond, struggling actress and reluctant fighter of supernatural evil

And The Wild Ways, from Tanya Huff, is a sequel to The Enchantment Emporium, continuing the story of matriarchially-run magic shops across modern Canada.

Since The Tao of Pooh -- and possibly earlier -- certain writers have mined popular fiction for rules to live by and attempted to hitch their own wagons to already established stars. (And sometimes, the the aforementioned Tao of Pooh, written really insightful, useful books along the way.) In this year of Hobbit-fever, there's a new entry in that genre: Noble Smith's The Wisdom of the Shire, a slim book that harvests rules for living from J.R.R. Tolkien's tales of Middle-earth. (Presumably "Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger" is right up top.) There is an introduction by Peter S. Beagle, and an associated website -- but the book itself could come your way on October 30th, when Thomas Dunne Books publishes it.

Peter Ackroyd, noted novelist (Hawksmoor) and historian (London: The Biography), has translated and retold Sir Thomas Mallory's Le Morte d'Arthur as The Death of King Arthur, which has now been published in a handsome Penguin Classics edition, with French flaps and a gorgeous illuminated-manuscript-style cover. (Of course, you e-book types lose all of that, but you're probably all reading mommy porn anyway, if the bestseller lists are any indication.) That handsome edition hits stores on October 30th.

I have just read the flap copy for HALO: The Thursday War (a novel based on the videogame series, and written by Karen Traviss) and understood perhaps one word in three. So I can tell you that there are people fighting very hard about things that you probably care about vastly more than I do. (And doing so on a Thursday, apparently.) I can tell you that this is in the "Kilo-Five" trilogy -- I suspect the middle book, since it's Traviss's second Halo novel, but don't quote me -- which may affect your buying decision. And, lastly, I can tell you that it's a Tor hardcover that published on October 2nd. If you like reading novels based on videogames -- an idea which, frankly, confuses me, since playing videogames mostly makes me want to play more videogames -- here is one to read.

Speaking of novels based on other things, I also have here The Walking Dead: The Road to Woodbury, a novel by Robert Kirkman and Jay Bonansinga that both follows the previous novel Rise of The Governor (and tells another aspect of the back-story of that popular villain of the series) and leads up to events in the main comics series. It's a zombie story, which means you know what it's about: the living dead will eat your flesh, but the real humans are even worse, those power-grubbing, nasty, scheming bastards. If that's the kind of world you like to immerse yourself in, I won't judge you. (Well, not to your face -- that would be rude.) Road to Woodbury is a hardcover from Thomas Dunne Books, coming on the 16th (which would be tomorrow).

And last for this week is an adaptation in the opposite direction: Blood Crime is a graphic novel in Kim Harrison's "Hollows' contemporary fantasy series, written by Harrison with art by Gemma Magno. As has become usual for such graphic adaptations, Blood Crime is a prequel to the main series (though a sequel to the first graphic novel, Blood Work), telling the story of an early case of series heroines Ivy Tamwood and Rachel Morgan. Blood Crime is from Del Rey, and hits stores on October 30th.